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The Premier League of search: How Englandâ€™s football clubs rank

By Chris Lee

Manchester United F.C. dominates the Premier League of websites much as the club does when it comes to the football pitch. That’s according to search marketing software firm Searchmetrics, whose study found that the bigger clubs’ websites all performed better than less-supported clubs’ sites when it came to search engine visibility. Searchmetrics used its own algorithm to attribute an “SEO Visibility” score to Premier League websites and also generated a league table for social media visibility of clubs.

Marcus Tober, founder and CTO of Searchmetrics, explained: “When it comes to the Web, in many ways Premier League football clubs act like media businesses. They try to attract visitors and fans to their official sites where they can engage with them and potentially sell tickets, hospitality packages and merchandise. They compete with newspaper publishers, broadcasters and online media, making visibility in search engines and social media a vital part of their online marketing.”

NMK spoke to Tober to understand the wider business significance of Searchmetrics’ findings on football clubs.

What’s the business significance of these findings? Surely search is a tiny part of a club’s marketing?

Fans are increasingly searching for information on their club on the Web and sharing links about them on social media. However there are hundreds of other sites (such as those belonging to newspapers, sports media and TV companies) that are competing for their attention when it comes to football related searches. If fans can’t find official sites they’ll go elsewhere, meaning clubs miss out on the chance to sell lucrative merchandise, which directly hits the bottom line.

While search is just one part of a club’s marketing mix it is rapidly growing in importance as Premier League teams look to attract supporters on a global basis. And with financial fair play rules coming in anything that increases revenues can only benefit clubs where it counts – on the pitch.

What’s your message to football clubs in general about their search marketing? Do tactics differ for football clubs as it would for any other business?

Look at who you are actually competing against when it comes to search – it won’t be other clubs, it will be media websites. Make sure you’ve put in place a proper monitoring and analysis framework and use this information to address any gaps in your search marketing, such as by adding content or links to your site. Most of all take it seriously – it could have a real impact on your bottom line.

The rules of search marketing apply equally to all businesses, including football clubs – understand your audience, what they are searching for and implement a programme that gets you to the top of the search engine table for your chosen keywords. And keep the programme going – search marketing isn’t a single match, it’s an on-going championship and you need to play accordingly.

And when it comes to their online shops, the tactics are the same as any other ecommerce website. You need to get traffic, work on the conversion rate and sell with a good return on investment.